Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Jack-O-Lantern Envy

When my siblings and I were kids (a long, long time ago) we looked forward to Halloween as one of our favorite holidays of the year. We didn't go all out decorating the outside of our house, but we took the costume creation veeerrryyy seriously. We loved thrift stores, and are artsy-fartsy, so we could always be counted on to pull out some fun ones.

One of our favorite parts of the celebration, though, was the carving of the pumpkin. That's right - ONE pumpkin. Singular. There were three of us for many years, until our baby sister was born, and we all had to share a lone pumpkin. My mom and step-dad created a competition between the three of us to come up with a design for the annual jack-o-lantern. They would pick one.

For the only pumpkin.

You get what I'm hinting at here, right? How much does a freaking pumpkin cost??? I saw them for $7.98 today at Wal-Mart... and of course they'll be cheaper in a week. Would it have killed them to buy THREE pumpkins so that we could each have our own??? It wasn't something I thought of until I was buying pumpkins for my own kids... then I discovered I was annoyed. I have no problem buying one for EACH of my three kids.

Call me Mrs. Moneybags.

But you know, I'm a mature adult. I've moved on. ;-)

Creating jack-o-lanterns are one of my kids' favorite parts of the weeks leading up to Halloween as well. We pick out pumpkins at local pumpkin patches, cover the kitchen island with newspaper, and commence hacking. Some are scary, some are funny... fat... tall... we are equal-opportunity hackers.

What are some of your favorite Halloween traditions? Home-made costumes? Haunted houses? Bobbing for apples at the block party? Do tell!